How to translate Drupal websites

The Drupal Internationalization module (i18n) provides an easy to use interface to translate Drupal websites. If you're using Drupal 8+, then this module has been incorporated into Drupal core. This tutorial is aimed at end-users wanting to use this module, rather than web developers. Elsewhere on this website, you can find information on our English and French translation service. and Drupal web development service.

Creating a web page

First, create the page as you would normally in your chosen language (we will use an example of an English and French website for this document, with a French page created in the first instance).

When creating the page, ensure you select the correct language, in this case French:

After you have saved the page, the i18n translation module adds an extra option to 'View' and 'Edit' - 'Translate'.

(In French, these will be 'Voir', 'Modifier' and 'Traduire').

Translating a web page

To translate a web page:

Click Translate (or Traduire).

Click Add Translation (or ajouter une traduction) next to the language that you wish to add.

The current version of the page will appear (so if it's a French page to start with, the French text will appear, with any images or other information also showing).

Edit the original (e.g. French) version and replace the text with the translated (e.g. English) text in all the different fields.

Press Save.

Choosing the language to edit after saving the translation

After you have saved a page, to ensure that you are editing it in the correct language, click on 'Translate' (or 'Traduire') again and then click 'edit' (or 'Modifier') next to the language that you want to modify.

We hope the Drupal i18n Internationalization tutorial has been helpful. Please click for more Drupal tutorials.